


Denial

by Pragnificent (PragmaticHominid)



Series: Falling Further [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Asphyxiation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 04:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9368102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/pseuds/Pragnificent
Summary: Hannibal attempts to force Will to choke him during sex. This is probably a bad idea.





	

Hannibal’s leg was hooked over Will’s shoulder and Will was inside him, his hips moving in sync with Hannibal’s breathing and his hands braced against Hannibal’s shoulder blades, when Hannibal took Will’s hands in his own and positioned them over his own neck. Hannibal lifted his chin expectantly as he did so, sinking his head back in the pillow and exposing his throat. His Adam's apple shifted under Will’s fingers when Hannibal swallowed. 

His eyes were on Will, and beneath the hooded unblinking speculation was the love, gleaming softly like a pearl resting at the bottom of a clear river. The softness of the love gutted him all over again, warming his center with the same drowsy and desperate sensation that had come with the spilling of his own blood across his belly. The knowledge that he had found such a love in Hannibal and that love was so inextricably directed at himself held him transfixed. 

When those eyes met his own it was difficult for Will to refuse him - the need to give ground, give in, give up, forgive, went hand-in-hand with that terrible love that so overwhelmed him, but nonetheless he shifted his hands downwards so that his open palms rested on Hannibal’s chest. 

There was the love, but there was an ugliness too, a poison possessiveness, twined in with the love and the desire the bottomless need  _ need  _ **_need_ ** , and he saw it flicker across Hannibal’s face now.

“Will,” he said, “why deny yourself?” and there was no way to dismiss the sincerity of the question. It was impossible to pretend that it was only selfish self-satisfaction that Hannibal was seeking. It was a gift that he was offering, wrapped up in the pretext of Hannibal’s own desire to help Will feel less unseemly for his own wanting, and tied up with the threads of a dozen different manipulations. 

He knew how poorly Hannibal responded when his gifts were rejected. The afterimage of the fleeting expression of anger at not getting his way, quickly hidden but no means gone, would not dissipate from behind his eyelids. He felt fear begin to stir and drew willfully upon his own deep reserve of anger to crush it before it could leave the egg. 

Angry that Hannibal should be angry with him and angrier at himself for his own wanting, he turned his eyes away and began to move his hips more quickly, wanting now to be done, to be apart, to find enough space in his own head to be able to remember why he had decided what he wanted and did not want and why. 

He wished that Hannibal was louder, more active, that he gave back more of what he was given. He has never been able to come separately from his partner. 

A mirror hung above the hotel room bed, and Will watched his own face reflected back at him, struck by the way that the anger didn’t waver and flicker there as it had used to. His face was set in hard lines, as though carved from wet stone. His upper lip, already pulled out of true by the scar that Dolarhyde had given him, was curled in self-disgust. 

He could feel himself beginning to lose his erection and he closed his eyes, trying to fix on some image that would bring it back, anything other than the memory of his own face. He was happy with none of the pictures that came into his mind. 

Hannibal’s hands were pulling at his own again, insistent and distracting. Without thinking first, Will hissed sharply, “ _ tssch _ !” 

Beneath him, Hannibal was suddenly completely still, and without looking down Will knew that he was watching him keenly, as he had been from the start, absorbing and evaluating every nuance of emotion that it betrayed. Deciding what to do next. The range of things that Hannibal could choose to do or not do were almost unlimited. 

Will felt himself redden. He thought that if he looked down at Hannibal, smiled apologetically and made a joke of it that might make a difference, and disgruntled annoyance might serve just as well, but he could not bring himself to do either. His heart was pounding in his ears, the fear making itself felt now, and what his face did was not under his own control. 

Hands closed on Will’s wrists, tightly enough to let him know that this time breaking away would be impossible, and the fear rose in him like a phoenix and painted his world hot and red. The welter of emotion radiating through Hannibal’s skin fed his own rage and terror at being restrained. He pulled out and shrugged Hannibal’s leg off his shoulder. He knew that he was not strong enough to get away and so did not struggle, as badly as he wanted to - fought instead to hold himself rigid and still. The trembling began regardless. 

“Let go,” he said, but Hannibal only readjusted his grip so that he could once again mold Will’s hands around his own throat before taking him by the wrists again to pin them there. 

Resignation broke over him like a wave and in its wake he began to shake harder, but when he met Hannibal’s eyes and saw the impassive, speculative satisfaction there, Will felt something within himself flip over and slide into viciousness. 

Pulling himself up Hannibal’s body until he was straddling his midriff, Will pressed his knee against the tangle of scar tissue that Dolarhyde’s bullet had left and watched Hannibal’s face intently as the shadow of pain passed over it. Bitterly gratified, he caught it, and then tightening his hands around Hannibal’s neck he leaned forward and pressed down as hard as he could.  

Hannibal did not struggle - not until it was nearly over. For nearly a minute he gave almost no reaction, save to lift his head an inch above the pillow to watch Will curiously, his head cocked at a slight angle below Will’s knuckles. His chest rose evenly beneath Will, as though all was normal, though Will knew from the faint rasping whistle that came with every effort at inhalation that only a thin trickle of air was making its way through his constricted  windpipe. 

That whistling became steadily louder and more strained, though still there was no distress on Hannibal’s face, his breathing was more rapid now and his chest was heaving beneath Will. His hands remained wrapped around Will’s wrists, squeezing hard, and Will thought distantly that he would have bruises to hide next time he left the hotel room. He tried to set his own face soft, to show the pleasure and gratitude that Hannibal wanted. He was not sure he was convincing but neither could he convince himself that he was only acting. 

Hannibal allowed - or forced, Will was no longer entirely sure - Will to take him to the edge, then he moved to lift Will’s hands from his throat. When Will did not respond, he tapped at the backs of Will’s hands, a gentle but somewhat hurried suggestion, and Will ground his thumbs in harder, cutting off the last pinprick leak of air. 

Will had begun to wonder if he was dreaming - all of this had such a familiarity to it - but when Hannibal began to struggle Will’s sense of reality came back with a jolt. 

He tried to throw Will off him but Will hung on tenaciously. When Hannibal’s knee caught him in the belly and knocked him sideways he caught a handful of Hannibal’s hair before he could be thrown from the bed and was back on top of him before he had a chance to fill his lungs.

Hannibal tried to get up - standing, he would have the advantage of size - but could not manage it. He tried to pry Will’s hands from his throat instead but could get no purchase. From the way his fingers moved over the back of Will’s he knew that for Hannibal they felt wooden and unresponsive, barely a part of himself. 

For Hannibal, his entire sense of self had retreated into the burning in his chest and his brain’s dizzy desperation for oxygen. Or at least that was what Will thought for several long moments, as he felt shockingly clumsy hands claw uselessly at him - that Hannibal had stopped thinking in the manner that Hannibal thought, that these were only the body’s involuntary and brainless efforts to save itself. 

Then Hannibal’s entire body jerked, each rigid muscle stretching to its limit an instant before his hands became still, as limp as the rest of him, and Will knew that he had been wrong. 

Hannibal was a convincing actor - he’d killed enough people this way to know how it went, Will knew - but Will also knew how long it really took to strangle another human being. 

“Playing possum,” Will said, and heard Gideon in his voice, in the note of scolding mockery and the click of his tongue.

Hannibal gave no response, but Will knew that he was only trying to lull him into letting go. 

Will did not let go. 

Twenty seconds later Hannibal seemed come suddenly to life. He was weak now, though, or at least seemed to be, and no longer bothering to struggle. One hand clenched at Will’s wrist, but only to hold it. With his other hand he reached out towards Will’s face in what might have been a caress, but Will knew how quickly Hannibal could gouge out an eye, and he didn’t dare to trust it. 

Hurt joined the panic that shone in his eyes when Will shifted away from the touch, and left Will feeling sick in his heart even as it goaded him to squeeze harder. There were tears, and he tried to tell himself that this was a meaningless response to the pressure building up behind Hannibal’s eyes as he choked, and when he could not believe that Will told himself that it was another effort at manipulation, a play for empathy - 

The bright, cunning spark that shone from Hannibal’s rapidly blinking eyes was going dull. Burst blood vessels painted streaks of red across the whites of his eyes. He was nearly still now - the hand that had reached for Will’s face drooped and came to rest of his chest, but two fingers still flexed slowly, seeming still to reach for him, to implore, and that cut at Will and got inside of him the way that none of the rest had, and he wanted - 

Will tried to think about everyone he had lost - everyone Hannibal had taken from him - and to transform that loss into the righteous anger that he needed now; Georgia and Abigail and Bev - Bev especially, in this moment. But it got tangled up inside his head, and instead of remembering how Hannibal had hurt Bev he began to think about how he was hurting Hannibal the way that Bev hurt, to feel that it was Bev that he was hurting now. 

So then he tried to stop thinking, to let the red static fill his brain until this was over and done with but Hannibal’s pain was inside of him now, fresh and bright though for Hannibal it must have already faded away, and it caught in Will’s chest and burned there, and with a ragged gasp that was nearly a shout he jerked his hands away. 

He was still for several seconds, looking down at his hands, which felt boneless and unsteady, and down past them at Hannibal, who was very still and pale. 

The realization hit him in a sickened wave that he might have broken Hannibal’s hyoid bone, though he could not remember feeling it give under his fingers and he was lost for a moment in the thought of how many cases he had seen where men had done just that to their lovers, the disgust that he had felt when he read the reports tinged with the nebulous sense of guilt that always came to him when he thought about other people hurting other people, before he realized how far aside from the fucking point that concern might be. 

He slid downward and laid his ear against Hannibal’s chest, and for several of his own fluttering heartbeats heard nothing but silence. Then Hannibal’s heart lurched back into action, stuttering repeatedly before settling into a rapid beat. Hannibal’s body tensed and then he let out a loud gasp as the air came back into him and he began to breathe.   

Will rolled away from him to sit hunched on the far corner of the bed. He had not cried during but he could feel that coming now, a wrenching, breathless sobbing that would more likely than not leaving him retching over the toilet bowl building up inside of him. 

If Hannibal let him make it as far as the bathroom. He wondered what sort of retribution he should expect, when and how it would fall on him. 

He could hear Hannibal moving behind him, shifting his weight to sit up against the bedframe. His breathing was still harsh and heavy, but not so much as it had been. “Will,” he said, and when no answer came he said again, “Will?”

Will didn’t turn around. He was taken in by his hands again, the way they ached formed associations with what had happened to Randall Tier. Once Will was on top of him, the boy had hardly fought back. Would he have killed Randall if he hadn’t been wearing Hannibal’s face? He had tried to tell himself no for a long time, but now he desperately wanted to believe the opposite. 

He remembered the basin of water, Hannibal’s hands on his hands, watching them waiver beneath the clear water as his blood slowly tinged it pink, Hannibal’s hands deftly winding the bandages around his knuckles, careful not to cause him further pain. After care. How had he not understood the way things were then? 

Will did not know what he was going to say until he said it. “Do you remember what Cordell told me, after I bit him?”

A hesitation, perhaps only Hannibal pausing for breath. “Of course.”

“He was going to take my face, still,” Will said. “But no anesthesia. He was going to make me feel it all... pay back.”

He paused, and Hannibal spoke into the short silence. “Do you remember what I did to him?” he asked. If there was nuance to his words, beyond the faint note of accusation, the hoarseness of his voice buried it. 

“I was sure that I was going to die.” A faint noise from Hannibal at that, perhaps annoyance. “And it seemed to me… after they had taken you away, while I was waiting for them to cut me, that all through these last few years - maybe my entire life - that the only thing that I ever got from fighting back was more pain. 

“But also - it didn’t matter.”

It was hard to go on, but he forced himself to. “When my teeth tore into his flesh it felt so good, no matter what punishment it brought down on me. Knowing that I had marked him felt good. And I remembered the way that you looked at me - the admiration, the love,” he said, hesitating only briefly over the last word, “that was on your face after I bit him, that buoyed me, so much that the memory of the bone saw seemed distant and immaterial.  

“This, what just happened - that didn’t feel good, not in that way. I just want you to know that.”

He shifted himself around on the edge of the bed so he was facing Hannibal. 

The flesh around his neck was already red and swollen. Hannibal reached up to touch in pensively, fingertips barely brushing the skin, which would be a dozen angry shades of blue and purple by the next day, and the gesture reminded Will so forcefully of Abigail that a new wave of guilt and grief and rage struck him. For an instant he wished he'd held on longer.

He got to his feet, angry all over again, and began to pull his clothes on. “You can’t keep feeding this crazy shit in me and then ignore me when I tell you to stop. There are  _ reasons _ why I say no - there have always been reasons but you never fucking stop pushing and then when I push back you have the temerity to act like the wounded party.” He wanted to shout - to scream - yet his voice was somehow steady. “I’m a ticking fucking timebomb thanks to you and you _ still _ keep fiddling with the wiring. Why? What did you expect? Didn’t you  _ know _ what would happen?”

“Will.” 

Will turned, prepared for almost anything except what Hannibal said next. 

“I am afraid that I owe you an apology. You’ve long ago passed the point in your treatment where you hid behind the denial of your true self. I should accept therefore that any refusal to exercise that nature stems not from neurosis or a fear of yourself but rather a careful evaluation of your limits in relationship to your own well being. 

“And,” he added wryly, his voice growing more hoarse as he continued, “it would seem my own as well.”  

It was inadequate.

As an apology, it took responsibility for almost nothing but rather danced around the larger point. 

It was more than he had ever expected to get from Hannibal, and having it now he found that he had no idea what to do with it. 

“I’ll get breakfast,” he said, though outside it was still dark. “Wait here.”

As he hurried away down the hotel corridor he kept his hands hidden in his jacket pockets. 


End file.
